Holding The Line Guide Service

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Month: August 2014

This Labor Day Saturday I fished with fishing buddies and Army buddies Blake Boutwell and Randy Durrence. Both are noncommissioned officers stationed at Fort Hood, each with eight years of service to the nation.

Blake Boutwell with 2 of the 52 fish we had to work for today. We stayed long and fished hard, but wound up with a full 25 fish limit for both he and his fishing buddy, Randy.

Randy Durrence caught our largest two white bass today, both 4-year old fish going between 14-15 inches long with a healthy girth.

Blake has two children, ages 2 & 5, and is originally from near Ft. Rucker, Alabama. Randy has two older chilidren and is from Jacksonville, FL. This was a great day for them, as they not only got to fish, but college football season for their Alabama and Florida teams kicks in today. They were like kids in a candy store!!

I specifically chose to avoid Belton Lake today anticipating heavy recreational traffic, and given that the only solid action I found during a scouting run earlier this week was early-morning top water action, which is easily put down by careless (clueless or inconsiderate) boaters. As I arrived at the boat ramp around 6:20, there were only 3 other boats in the launching process, and this on a 4-day holiday weekend with nice weather; by comparison, this is less traffic than would be associated with even a small bass tournament. Things were looking good already!

As we got going this morning, the winds were calm and we had some substantial cloud cover, thus the bite got off to a slow and late start. We picked up a few fish down rigging in the vicinity of area 1419, then moved on, picking up a few more fish along a deepwater breakline both buy downrigging and vertical jigging, but this action was pretty light.

We moved once again and at this third area as we arrived found largemouth bass popping shad on the surface, which got our hopes up, at that is typically a sign of increasing or high fish feeding activity. Although we did catch a few more white bass here by way of downrigging, the fish we saw were few and far between, and not schooled together heavily. They were also near bottom and not suspended up off bottom indicating a less aggressive feeding posture. It did not help that what light breeze had begun to blow not completely stopped, leaving the surface glassy. We moved on. During this ~30 minute pause in the fishing action, most other fishing boats we saw packed it in.

At our final stop of the day we returned to that same deep breakline we had contacted fish on earlier. As we arrived, more schooling largemouth were popping shad on the surface, so we began working the area over with blade baits cast horizontally to no effect. We went back to downrigging and put the vast majority of our fish in the boat in the last 90 minutes of this trip, which I extended by 60 minutes. There was next to no fishing pressure now present on the lake as the hot, humid, windless conditions just about cleared the lake, and the recreational crowd (skiers, tubers, etc.) had yet to arrive.

During this time we continuously passed over well-consolidated, suspended schools of white bass and nearly every time we passed over a school we would pick up at least one fish, and often wound up with doubles, as well as two triples. Fortunately, these fish were all in the three year class, so not only were they abundant, but they were good size for Stillhouse white bass.

Long story short, persistence paid off for us in the last 90 minutes during which time we more than doubled our catch and put the larges fish of the trip in the boat. We finished up the trip today with exactly 52 fish boated, including 51 white bass and one largemouth bass. All but one fish came on the downriggers outfitted with Pet Spoons on 3-arm umbrella rigs.

Labor Day marks the end of summer for many, with kids back to school, vacation time completely spent, and football and hunting seasons just getting going. If you are headed out on our area lakes this weekend I suggest going early to beat the heat and to take advantage of the low-light topwater action that typically erupts this time of year.

Beware: Labor Day, 01 September, falls in the new license year for hunting and fishing licenses, and, in an effort to combat “Boating While Intoxicated”, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Game Wardens and Corps of Engineer Park Rangers are typically on patrol on holiday weekends like this one.

I fished Belton Lake this morning on a scouting trip and encountered some very enjoyable, albeit short-lived, topwater action. I found fish feeding on small baitfish in three distinct locations between 6:30am and 8:15am. It was very important to scale down the size of my artificial lure. At one point I had several other boats around me and while I caught a fish on one in every two to three casts, the other boats using large topwater plugs, large slabs, and crankbaits rarely caught fish at all.

I’ve included a photo to illustrate this, below. Pictured is a 19″ hybrid striped bass, and placed on the deck of my boat just in front of its mouth are 6 baitfish located beneath a nickle for perspective. The 2 fish in the column I arranged on the left are silversides, and the 4 fish in the column I arranged on the right are threadfin shad. This is the size of the forage these fish are eating right now and anglers will do well to imitate this or results will lag. These baitfish were all regurgitated by the white bass and hybrid stripers I caught this morning.

This 19″ hybrid fell for a Pet Spoon approximately 1.25″ in length which imitated the small forage it was feeding on. Note the 6 small baitfish near the fish’s mouth.

The two skinnier fish on the left are silversides, and the four sway-bellied fish on the right are threadfin shad. All of these fish were regurgitated on my boat deck this morning by the fish I caught.

As always when fishing for topwater fish, try to keep your distance so as not to spook the fish off the surface. Maneuver in with your trolling motor, NOT your outboard, and keep your retrieve speed high so the fish don’t get a good look at your presentation.

This morning I conducted the 18th SKIFF trip of the 2014 season with members of the Pappas family and the Cancel family aboard. SKIFF (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) trips are provided free of charge to families whose children are separated from a parent due to that parent’s military service thanks to the Austin Fly Fishers and a network of supportive individuals from all over the U.S. All it takes is a phone call from a parent to me at 254-368-7411 to reserve a date.

Both moms joined me today on the water, which is really nice especially where younger elementary-aged kids are concerned. Representing the Pappas family was Mrs. Shaydee Pappas and her 5-year-old son, Josiah. Josiah’s dad, U.S. Air Force Tech. Sergeant Pappas is currently deployed to Qatar where he supports the U.S. Army as a weapons director. He has served almost 13 years in the USAF. Mrs. Pappas is a USAF veteran, having served in the USAF’s Air & Space Operations. Representing the Cancel family was Mrs. Yuneisy Cancel and her three children, Chantelle (age 12), Jose (age 11), and Chanelle (age 7). Yuneisy’s husband, Jose, has 6 years in the U.S. Army under his belt and is currently supporting U.S. Army troops in Afghanistan as a digital systems engineer focused on communication systems.

None of the four kids aboard today had ever caught a fish before, and all earned a Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept. “First Fish Award” as a result of their accomplishments today.

Although during several attempts at working slabs vertically for fish we found congregated on the bottom the kids did very well at this technique, the fish were reluctant to cooperate. We made 3 stops and tried vertical jigging after making successful downrigging passes over heavy schools of fish and tossing a buoy on the fish to mark the location of the schools. On only one of these three attempts did the fish perk up once we got our slabs down to them. On that attempt we picked up 3 fish in short order and missed a 4th that was hooked but pulled off before being landed.

Otherwise, we spent the rest of the trip using the downriggers and working through a 4-way rotation from youngest to oldest among the four kids. This worked out pretty well as there are other tasks than just catching the fish that downrigging entails, including letting the lines out the correct distance behind the boat, letting the downrigger weights down below the boat to the correct distance, and then bringing the balls back up to clear the hardware from the water after a fish is hooked and is being fought to boatside. Even Josiah, our youngest fisherman today, stayed engaged right to the end of the outing today. I guaranteed the moms that everyone would be “nap-ready” following lunch today. I know I was!

In all, we boated 27 fish today including 26 white bass and 1 freshwater drum. After seeing how much their kids enjoyed the sport, both moms mentioned that they thought going fishing would be something their husbands would enjoy doing with the kids upon their return from overseas.

Demand for SKIFF trips (and all fishing trips, for that matter) tends to drop off sharply once the school year commences once again and schedules fill with sports and other activities, so, I was glad we could accommodate these families just days before the start of school on Aug. 25th.

Thank you, Austin Fly Fishers, for the work you do behind the scenes to allow it all to come together for trips like this one!

This morning I conducted the 17th SKIFF trip of the 2014 season accompanied by Anna & Matthew Niles. SKIFF (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) trips are provided free of charge to families whose children are separated from a parent due to that parent’s military service thanks to the Austin Fly Fishers and a network of supportive individuals from all over the U.S. All it takes is a phone call from a parent to me at 254-368-7411 to reserve a date.

Anna Niles, dressed to the nines with this pink dress, matching top, and pink ice cream cone earrings, caught this nice 3.00 pound largemouth bass on a Pet Spoon worked down around the 25 foot mark where schools of white bass and wolfpacks of largemouth were feeding on shad.

Matthew Niles had never caught a fish before today’s trip. He started us off right today catching a “double” consisting of this 2.50 pound largemouth bass and an 11 inch white bass landed at the same time on the same rod which was rigged with 3 Pet Spoons to imitate a small school of shad.

Matthew, age 6, and Anna, age 8, are the two youngest children of U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Rolland Niles and his wife, Mrs. Shawna Niles, of Harker Heights, Texas. LTC Niles deployed to Afghanistan with the First Cavalry Division earlier this summer for approximately a year’s time. Shawna has now taken on the role of single parent to her three children for the remainder of this deployment.

Given the kids’ age, the slightly elevated wind speed, and the fact that I was fishing without assistance today, we stuck strictly with downrigging this morning and did quite well. We used several sizes and colors of Pet Spoons on twin 3-armed umbrella rigs trolled at just over the level the fish were holding at to keep the fish coming in the boat steadily over the course of the entire trip.

The best action came in the first 75 minutes of the trip and slowly tapered off from that point to our close at 11:00am. I was surprised at how, when I described what fish looked like on sonar (yellow, boomerang-shaped arches), the kids picked up on that and were constantly watching sonar for fish to appear, and then intently watching the downrigger rods for a result as our baits passed by the fish we’d just spotted on sonar just seconds earlier.

As we wrapped up our trip and beached on the gravel near the boat ramp, Shawna was just rolling in to the parking lot to come pick the kids up. We held back two fish in the livewell because the kids wanted to take a picture of their fish with their mom so that dad would be able to see what they caught on their trip today.

Although Matthew and Anna had been on a boat before, neither had fished before and so the fish they caught today were the first fish they caught in their lifetimes. After cleaning up the boat, grabbing a little lunch, and a quick nap, I filled out the necessary paperwork to get a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department “first fish award” headed by mail to the kids to recognize their achievement.

At one point during our time on the water I asked the kids if they thought their mom’s job was harder with their dad gone. Anna answered instantly and said, “Yes, because that’s just one person doing the job of two people.”.

As the Niles family headed back towards their car to head home, I let Shauna know that if she and her eldest daughter needed to have some mother daughter time without the little ones at some point during this deployment, she was welcome to call on me for a separate trip.

I fished a tough evening trip this evening with Mr. David Nix of Liberty Hill, Texas, and his 15 year old son, Noah. David works for State Farm insurance in Austin, and Noah is entering high school as a freshman this year. His interests lie in playing basketball, running track, and competitive swimming. David called on short notice this past Tuesday hoping to put something together for the two of them before the school year kicked in and life got busy again.

David Nix and his son, Noah, with a few of the fish we had to work extra hard tonight to get in the boat — it was a tough evening all around.

The funny thing is there’s really nothing I can point to that led to our diminished catch tonight. The winds were a bit high for the first hour, but they were slightly west of south, the pressure was high, the skies were fair, and the fishing this morning ended around the usual 10:30 to 11:00am timeframe, so the fish had plenty of time to digest their breakfast before going into an evening feed.

The fishing we experienced this evening simply lacked any consistency. We saw no topwater action, no bird action, next to no schools of white bass congregated together on sonar, very little in the way of suspended shad, and the most we caught from any area was five white bass taken from Area 1250 on horizontally worked blade baits. We also caught three fish from one fairly well defined area on downriggers late in the evening. Everything else was scattered, almost random fish on the downriggers over the course of the four plus hours on the water.

I suppose it is a good thing that we humans have not figured out every variable that makes fish tick or we would have exploited that information long ago and the world’s stocks of fish would no doubt be depleted by now as a result. As I like to say, “There are no two fishing trips just alike.”. Just because the fish do a certain thing in a certain time and place today is no guarantee that they will do likewise the next day or the next, even when conditions seem nearly identical. Our trip this evening was proof of that.

I fished on Stillhouse Hollow this morning with Mr. Steve Niemeier of Temple, his daughter Emily, and his granddaughter, four-year-old Emma. As with most summertime trips involving youth, we targeted white bass today — they are sporty and abundant, cooperative and predictable — just right for kids, and adults, too, for that matter.

This was Emma’s very first time on a boat, so you can just imagine all the things, both fun and scary, running through her head. As we eased out of the no wake zone near the ramp, Emma gave me the thumbs-up that we were okay to “go fast”. As we arrived at our first fishing area, I slowed down to idle speed to set our downriggers out. There was something about the waves slapping on the fiberglass hull that really drew Emma’s attention. Emily told her that when she was a little girl she used to think that that sound and feeling of the boat going through the waves was the boat striking alligators’ heads. Emma probably spent more time during our trip today hanging with her head over the side watching the waves lap on the hull than she did engaged in catching fish, but that was just fine by me!

At our first location we picked up six fish by 8:05 AM by downrigging with a pair of three-armed umbrella rigs equipped with Pet Spoons. As has been typical over the past three weeks, the low light bite offered some so-so fishing for scattered suspended white bass.

As we left this area behind and begin to survey the second area we would fish, looking for topwater action on the surface and fish feeding below us using sonar, we found more active fish just turning on at around 8:30 AM. I was just about to deploy the downriggers when I came across a very tight school of bottom oriented white bass on a break line dropping from 25 to 29 feet. The fish were stacked on the slope’s face of this feature, and on the shallower tier. Using the i-Pilot, I hovered right over top of these fish and we all went to work using slabs finished vertically to capitalize on what we had found. We caught fish steadily for about 30 minutes first using the slabs, and then extending our reach beyond the boat by using blade baits fished in the lower third of the water column. At the same time the topwater feeding largemouth quit feeding, the white bass also turned off and we left this area to search for more fish.

Around this same time the wind began to ramp up to well over 15 mph with gusts up over 20 mph, making things a little tougher. We went for about 50 minutes pulling only three more fish on the downriggers, and not really finding congregations of fish in the three or four areas that we searched during that time. Around 10:25am we finally found another bunch of fish again, near a breakline going from 27 to 33 feet deep, and holding at the top of the break. Again we used the i-Pilot to hover, slabs to fish vertically for all the fish we could catch from directly beneath the boat, and then used blade baits to “mop up” from around the boat in all directions. We took our fish count up to 53 at this location.

By 11 AM, and after suffering a yellowjacket sting on her forehead, Emma was pushing the limits of her four-year-old endurance. We decided to call it a good day right there, took a few family photos, and let Emma steer the boat through the no wake zone to wrap up. For our efforts today we boated a total of 53 fish, including two freshwater drum, and 51 white bass in the one, two, and three year classes.

Today I fished a morning trip on Stillhouse Hollow with Mr. Jack Sims and his two grandsons, Jackson and Kyle. Jackson and Kyle are visiting for about a week from the Houston area before heading back to school.

L to R: Kyle, Jackson, and Jack with 3 of the 57 fish we had to work for today. Heavy clouds kept the activity level fairly subdued today.

Jack makes his living in Temple, TX, working for Vanguard Contractors, a general contractor and construction management firm. Jackson is headed into 8th grade and will soon be old enough to accompany Jack on his annual trout fishing trek to the Arkansas River; Kyle is headed into 6th grade.

The temperature at sunrise this morning was 77°F under very heavy, grey, cloudy skies and humid conditions with a 10 mile-per-hour wind already blowing. Days on which the sunrise is greatly obscured by cloud cover tend not to fish as well as days with a nice clear sunrise, and today was no exception.

The fishing started off okay for scattered, suspended white bass willing to hit our presentations on the downriggers. However, the strong midmorning bite that we’ve enjoyed over the past few days never really developed, as the sun never really brightened and got the food chain going up at the lake’s surface.

I have noticed that right around the time the sun gets bright enough to make you want to put on sunglasses, that level of brightness seems to turn the fish on, and largemouth bass feeding on shad seem to be the first ones on the scene. Today, sunglasses were never really a necessity as the cloud cover stayed very thick and the direct sun never shown through it. There were no instances where I felt we could have successfully thrown topwater baits.

We wound up catching exactly 57 fish, just one fish less than my catch from yesterday, but we really had to work for every fish and we spent an extra half-hour trying to do so. The fish never really got into a groove. We wound up fishing four different areas and having to switch back-and-forth between techniques to stay on top of the action the fish at each location would offer.

Fortunately, the boys ware pretty good with a spinning reel and the change ups of equipment were no big deal for them. Our catch of 57 fish consisted of 3 largemouth bass and 54 white bass. Our white bass catch included fish from the 0 to 3 year classes.

Steve owns his own small business focused on mapping software, Brian works for Scott & White in Round Rock, and Owen is getting geared up for 1st Grade.

This time of year I typically choose Stillhouse anytime a child is involved with the trip as it fishes more consistently for me than does Lake Belton.

Due to the storms that passed over us and west of us last night, the evening feed was interrupted by thunder, lightning, rain, and otherwise turbulent weather, so, I anticipated this morning’s fishing would be solid, and it was.

We experienced a low-light bite from sunrise and until 8:05a as scattered, small schools of white bass began to coalesce and feed on the abundant schools of young of the shad. As the sun brightened, no fish pushed bait up shallow for us to enjoy a vertical jigging bite on, so we moved on.

At our second stop of the morning we found the most active largemouth bass topwater feed going on that I’ve witnessed in over 2 weeks. This action lasted for right at 1 hour. The largemouth on top betrayed many more largemouth and white bass beneath, and these are what we focused on. We used slabs fished vertically when sonar lit up indicating fish beneath the boat; we used blade baits fished horizontally when the fish slacked off under the boat, and, when the action got intense enough and close enough on the surface, we threw Heddon Spook Jr.’s and caught them that way. Little Owen actually landed the largest fish of the trip, an unusually large (for topwater fishing) 3 pound largemouth. As the winds went from 10-12mph up to 13-15mph, the surface got really rough and the topwater action stopped.

We went on to our third and final stop of the day and were fortunate enough to find more topwater feeding fish pointing the way to active fish below, this time in a semi-protected area not roughed up by the wind too badly. We fished vertically with slabs for heavily schooled, bottom-oriented white bass for about a 35 minutes span, then, as this action began to wane for good, we “mopped up” with the downriggers for the few still-active fish amongst a growingly inactive population of fish.

For our efforts today we put 58 fish in the boat including 1 freshwater drum, 5 largemouth bass, and 52 white bass up to 13.75″ long.

On the morning of Aug. 15th I conducted the 16th SKIFF trip of the 2014 season by welcoming aboard Jayden Barrios (age 5) and Austin Bayless (age 11) . SKIFF (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) trips are provided free of charge to families whose children are separated from a parent due to that parent’s military service thanks to the Austin Fly Fishers and a network of supportive individuals from all over the U.S. All it takes is a phone call from a parent to me at 254-368-7411 to reserve a date.

L to R: Jayden Barrios and Austin Bayless.

5-year-old Jayden is the son of U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Adam Barrios and Mrs. Stacy Barrios of Killeen, Texas. SSG Barrios recently deployed to Afghanistan leaving Stacy in the role of single parent for what could be many months to come. 11-year-old Austin is the son of U.S. Army Captain Wyatt Bayless and Mrs. Jennifer Bayless of Harker Heights, Texas. CPT Bayless is in the process of taking command of a scout company in the First Cavalry Division. Time-intensive equipment inventories are a dreaded part of every commander’s transition into command as they sign for millions of dollars of equipment soon to be under their control. Mrs. Bayless and her children have seen very little of CPT Bayless of late, and this will continue until the inventories are complete. She knew Austin could use a little “guy time” before school began and so we made that happen.Today we used a combination of downrigging and vertical jigging to target white bass in deep, clear water on Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir. As we began our day, the winds had finally turned back out of the south and east following four days under the influence of very high pressure in the wake of an early week cold front. We struggled after the sunrise in the face of that southeast wind, but, in the final hour of the trip we made up for lost time as the winds turned southwesterly and the fishing improved greatly.

Austin, who has been fishing with me before during his father’s multiple deployments, served as my first mate to try to help me make Jayden successful. Austin did a great job in this role being both helpful and watchful.

By the end of our trip we had landed 34 white bass and 2 large mouth bass.

Funny moments are just about a guaranteed part of these SKIFF trips. As we fished, Austin asked me about generalities of the various decades in recent U.S. history. When he asked specifically about the 1950s, I asked if he had ever watched the TV show “Happy Days”. He said he was not sure. I then asked if he had ever heard of The Fonz. He replied, “Isn’t that a band, or an extraterrestrial life form?”.

Then, after I had dropped Jayden off at his house and was on the way to Austin’s house to drop him off, Austin turned to me and asked, “How old are you?”. I replied, “I am 45 years old.”. Austin said, “That’s pretty good.”. I’m still not sure what scale he had in mind to make that judgment with…

Finally, continuing on the subject of age, Austin told me of a very good complement to pay to the ladies. He said I should tell ladies that they don’t look a day over 20. I told him I thought that was indeed a favorable thing to mention, and suggested he tell his mom that. He then replied that it was his mom who had instructed him to say this!! I had a difficult time keeping the truck and trailer on the road at that point.

This morning I finished with Garrett Jones, the son of Tim and Mitzi Jones of Michigan. Both Garrett’s mom and his “favorite aunt” Aunt DeAnn joined us as non-fishing spectators/sunbathers.

Garrett Jones joined me for some multi-species angling this morning all the way from Michigan. We caught largemouth on topwater baits, and white bass and freshwater drum on slabs, blade baits, and downrigged spoons.

Garrett’s family traveled to Texas to visit a very ill family member, and decided to add a little silver lining to life in the way of a fishing excursion while they were here.

As we got going this morning I did a bit of instruction on fishing vertically with slabs as I anticipated we would find aggressively feeding fish given today’s weather conditions. We have had a return to moderate high-pressure, southwesterly winds, and some haze in the atmosphere, all of which contribute to a strong bite. When we actually got on the water and began searching with sonar, these expectations of finding aggressively feeding fish were quickly met.

We finished only two areas this morning and found a strong feed underway at both. The first area gave up fish on the downrigger for about our first hour on the water, then a few top water largemouth, followed by a strong slab bite from bottom-oriented, heavily schooled white bass in 32 to 30 feet of water.

These fish fed for another two hours right up to 10 AM. When the feed at this first location ended, we were fortunate to drive directly to yet another aggressively feeding school of bottom-oriented fish in 28 feet of water. This school of fish had evidently been feeding for a while and we were lucky enough to hit the tail end of that heavy feed. We finished blade baits in the lower third of the water column to cover a 40 yard area over which sonar indicated these fish were spread.

When the fish begin to turn off they often go from hitting the Cicada blade bait hard and hooking themselves on the forward hook, to just nipping at the lure and getting caught on the rear hook. While they are still biting hard, the strike to land ratio can be right around 1 to 1; but once the bite gets sluggish it can drop to 5-6 strikes to every 1 landed fish, and shortly after this the bite just dies completely. Things went flat for us right at 11am today.